


(un)lost

by burning_brighter



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Steve Rogers, M/M, Peggy Carter is a national treasure, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Vigilante Steve Rogers, everyone is hurt, vigilantes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-05-06 08:24:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14637923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burning_brighter/pseuds/burning_brighter
Summary: After seven years on a stranded island, Steve Rogers, son of billionaire Joseph and Sarah Rogers, is back in New York to protect his city from the people who made him who he is.ORSteve and Bucky based on Arrow





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with this last year and catching up on the new season of Arrow made me want to go back to it. I hope you guys enjoy it.

Lying awake in his hospital bed at three in the morning, Steve tries to understand how the hell he ended up there.

Well, not really. He knows how he ended up in a hospital bed in New York, seven years after leaving the city, but what he doesn’t know is _why_.

Seven years ago, Steve died in a plane crash. Or at least that was what everyone thought had happened until Steve wound up at the airport roughly twenty-four hours earlier. Because seven years ago, Steve survived a plane crash and ended up on some weird island in the middle of the ocean.

There was no denying the fact that no one should have survived that accident, even less Steve Rogers. When he got on that plane, Steve was a tall, skinny young man with bad lungs and a not-so-great heart. The man who is now laying in a hospital bed years later is taller and made of muscle.

Just after the wreck, Steve had woken up on a piece of metal from the fuselage. All he had with him was his backpack, empty for the most part, expect for a few energy bars, a small bottle of water and some of his art supplies. Steve tried to ration everything he had, not knowing how long he was to stay stranded in the middle of the sea. Three days later, the tide finally brought him to the shore of a small deserted island.

Steve is aware of how impossible it all seemed and sometimes he isn't even sure of who he really is and if that person is ,in fact, Steve Rogers. But when his mother arrived to the hospital twelve hours earlier, there was nothing but relief and love on her face. There was not one ounce of doubt in her. She knew it was her son.

Everyone else is not as sure as Sarah Rogers.

When all the mandatory exams had been done after his rescue, Steve found himself in a room with two police officers asking him to confirm his identity and when the answers Steve gave them were not enough, they ran his fingers prints and his DNA.

Steve could not blame them. 

He does not sleep at all, his mind going a hundred miles an hour.

When the sun rises the next day, he is released for the hospital. There was nothing else they could do anyway. Steve is in perfect health, there was nothing more to be done.

Sarah picks him up from the hospital and together, they go home. Or, at least, the last place Steve Rogers was able to call home, a huge mansion standing in the middle of Manhattan.

Steve has always known wealth. He was – still is – the single child of famous businessman Joseph Rogers and philanthropist Sarah Rogers. For five years after he was born, Steve lived with both of his parents in Brooklyn. They owned a big house in Brooklyn before Joseph Rogers's company became a Fortune 500 company. That's when they bought the mansion on Riverside Drive, in the Upper West Side.

Steve never struggled with money for a day in his life. When he was sixteen, his dad bought him a Lamborghini. For his eighteenth birthday, he went on a trip across Europe before starting college. His father had no issue paying the tuition for Steve to go to Columbia or for anything Steve needed to paint, draw or hell, even sculpt.

When, at the age of twenty-two, right after his graduation, he asked if he could take the jet to Australia with a friend, he was not told no. He was never told no. 

Looking back on it, it was the worst decision he had ever made in his life. Not only did it ruin his own life, it took Sharon's. He had no excuse for what he did. His ex-girlfriend, Peggy, who he had been with for years, had just broken up with him and Steve was mad and hurt; so he took her cousin on a trip to Australia. He never regretted anything more than that.

Steve is not that same person anymore. What happened during these last seven years changed him. It would have changed the strongest of man.

See, when he was found and brought back to New York, Steve told everyone he had been alone on an island the whole time but the truth is he wasn’t.

He _was_ alone for about two weeks. But as he was struggling to find anything to eat or drink or even a shelter for the night, he stumbled upon a man who helped him. He helped him find food and he provided him shelter for a long time. If Steve hadn't met Abraham Erskine, neither of them would be alive today.

He snaps out of his memories when his mother's car door is slammed shut. He gets out of the car as well only to find himself frozen in place in front of his house.

For seven long years Steve has thought about nothing except this. _Coming home_. But now that he is in front of his house, all he can do is just stare at it and feel scared.

Fear is a feeling he hasn't felt in a long time. 

Keeping himself from feeling any fear is probably the only thing that kept him alive before but at this moment, Steve had no hell left to survive so he just let the feeling surround him, control him and overwhelm him, just for a second, just for a minute. The feeling was gone as fast as it came and he is finally able to pick his bag up from the sidewalk. He walks through the door with wide eyes and a small smile on his face. He looks around the enormous marble entry hall and then to the big wooden room with the huge wooden stairs to his left. It looks exactly like the last time he saw it. For just a fraction of a second, it feels like nothing has changed.

Sarah quickly takes Steve upstairs to the fourth floor, to the loft where Steve used to live before his life got out of control. Just like downstairs, this place has not changed one bit.

"We didn't touch anything after you – after you disappeared," Sarah says, gesturing to the bedroom space on their left and to Steve's half-finished painting under the skylight, in front of the glass wall opening up to a terrace. 

Steve doesn't know what to say so he doesn’t say a word, like he has been doing for the last two days or so. Steve goes over to the windows to look at the city all around them and sighs. He lets out all the worry and dread about finally coming home and finally coming back to his old life.

He steps outside in the chill April air and leans against the balustrade. Steve looks down at the street below wondering how nothing in this house had changed. How can he have been gone for seven years and feel like everything is the same? How can he have changed so much in that lapse of time and come back to a city where everything just feels the same?

He knows that a lot had changed. His mother explained to him the day before just how much it had. But why doesn't it feel like it?

Steve's father was a great man. Everything was not always great between Joseph and his son but they still loved each other strongly, fiercely. So, it went without saying that Steve's heart broke when Sarah explained to him that his dad passed away not even a year after Steve allegedly died. 

Joseph's health had not been the best, even before Steve left. But learning that they had salvaged the wreckage of the plane with no apparent survivor gave Steve's dad the final push and his heart did not hold after that.

Steve knows there are some things his mother doesn’t feel like talking about with her newly rescued son but whatever it is, he is certain she has the best of reasons for not sharing that information. 

And if he is honest with himself, there is only one thing, one person he has been wondering about since the second his feet hit American soil.

"How's Bucky?" Steve finally asked.

James Barnes, or Bucky for Steve, has been his best friend since they were five-year-old kids in kindergarten. They had spent all of their time together since then, they even went to college together, shared a dorm room for the mandatory first year on campus before moving the two of them moved to Steve's loft. They had always been inseparable. 

The person Steve missed the most while he was away had definitely been Bucky. The fact that James did not show up at the hospital yesterday did hurt Steve but then, he understood. Life kept on going while he was stranded. People that were once in his life had gone on with their own. He cannot blame anyone for that.

"James is," Sarah hesitated before saying anything else, "he's okay."

Steve only nods, frowning slightly. He knows his mother, even after six years, she still has all the same tells. She is not exactly lying but what she just told Steve was not the truth either.

He does not stop Sarah when she squeezes his shoulder and leaves him to his thoughts in his room. Being alone is probably the only thing that feels familiar nowadays. _Isn't it so fucking sad?_

After a quick shower and a snack, Steve grabs the one and only bag he brought back from the island he was stuck on for years and heads down to the basement of the house. He goes into the one room only he has had access to in the past so he guesses not much has changed on this front either. See when they moved here, one of the rooms in the basement still had a tunnel that led to the Hudson from when the house was built in early twentieth century. Steve's parents always wanted that thing blocked but when Steve found out about it when he was a teenager, he managed to find a way to use it with no one actually knowing it was still there. 

After locking the door behind him, Steve set the bag he was carrying, opening it slowly to reveal the only thing he managed to hide from both the people who rescued him as well as he authorities when he arrived in the States; a big shiny circular shield. 

Steve set up everything. He got the shield out as well as the helmet he still has. He is so damn thankful they had not thoroughly checked his bags when he entered the country, he has no idea how he would have explained that. 

When he was satisfied with the way he organized the room, Steve goes back upstairs to the living room, where his mother is sitting, reading a book.

"Can we go buy a laptop and a phone?" Steve asks, sitting down next to her. "I need to do some research."

Sarah simply nods, guiding Steve back to the car.

When they got to the mall, Sarah urges Steve to look around on his own while she runs some errands.

"The car is staying outside so don't worry, just head there where you wanna leave", she says.

To be honest, Steve is kind of relieved that his mother doesn’t want to stay with him the whole time. He feels like it is something he has to do alone.

Steve simply walks around the mall for the first half hour. He doesn’t recognize everything so he just wants to take it all in, see what has changed and what has stayed the same. He looks inside of every stores he sees, trying to find faces he recognizes but he doesn’t. How could he, really? He sometimes doesn't even recognize his own face.

The mall is busy, as usual, but not as busy as he would have thought or maybe even excepted. The good thing is crowd is that it is that much harder for him to be seen. The press has been everywhere since he stepped out of the airplane two days ago and he just wants to walk around freely. Fortunately, he has not seen one reporter yet.

After buying a smartphone and a laptop with his mother's credit card, he sits down in the food court to set it up. He starts with the phone and figures he can take care of the laptop once he is back home. Back home. It still feels so weird just thinking it. 

When he is done, Steve gets up and heads for the bathroom before leaving.

It's when he feels himself being cornered by two big guys who he knows have been following him since he got up from the food court. 

Steve just stops, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before turning around and facing the men. They look at Steve with something that can only be qualified as disgust. They mumble something to Steve but he really could not be bothered to try and understand because he really doesn’t care at all what they have to say. 

He lets the first man hit him. It is a good punch, strong and steady but Steve barely even feels it, barely moves. He feels his lip break with the second punch but he still doesn’t flinch and the two men in front of him start to look slightly suspicious and annoyed. As the second man steps closer and tries to throw a punch of his own, Steve just catches his fist and twists his arm. The attacker goes down to his knees, asking his friend to help. The first idiot takes a step towards Steve but just gets punched in the throat instead. With his second hand free, Steve just punches the other man while still holding his arm, knocking him straight out with the strength of the blow. 

Steve wipes his mouth, looks at the cut for a second then picks up his things and go.

When he opens the door to get into the car, his mother is sitting there, looking down at her phone, slightly smiling. She doesn’t say anything when Steve sits down next to her or when he tells the driver to bring them home. 

It takes Sarah about ten minutes to look at his son and when she does, she is silent for two more. Her hand extends towards Steve's face and he tries not to flinch when her skin touches his but it's hard. He stays unmoving when her thumb grazes the cut on his lip.

"What happened?" she asks, unbelievably calm.

Steve just shrugs and says some thug wanted to mug him but was stopped when other people walked by. He knows Sarah isn't convinced but she just nods and drops the subject. Steve sees her write a long text to someone then smile up at him after she sends it.

When Steve wakes up the next day, it's with a scream. That is how it is now. Every time he closes his eyes for more than an hour, the nightmares come. Except they are not nightmares but memories. 

He simply shakes his head, hoping to shake the feeling as well then gets up. He goes to the bathroom to wash his face and when he looks at himself in the mirror, the cut on his lip is gone. He only shrugs, knowing full well how his body works now, how it heals.

When he gets downstairs an hour later, he hears to sets of voices in the living room. As he enters, he sees his mother talking to someone he has never seen before.

The man is handsome. He looks tall even sitting down and Steve can see how muscular he is through his suit jacket. He has dark skin and dark eyes but full of mischief and life. Steve envies that somehow. 

The stranger looks up at Steve and a small smirk tugs and his lips when he notices him standing there. The man gets up, nods at Sarah and walks towards Steve with a pointed look and a determined smile. 

Sarah gets up as well and follows the man. She stops when she is at Steve's side and gestures to the other person in the room.

"Steven, this is Sam," she says with a soft smile on her face. "He's going to be your chauffeur and bodyguard from now on."

Steve sighs but doesn’t say a word, he just extends his hand to shake Sam's, only nodding at him. Sam does the same only he is still wearing that smirk on his face and honestly, Steve kind of wants to punch him for it.

Well this certainly is going to be a problem.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter : Bucky and Peggy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the comments and kudos on the first chapter, it means a lot!
> 
> Here is the second chapter, I hope you guys enjoy it, let me know.
> 
> unbeta'd so all the mistakes are mine.

Steve spends days locked up in his loft, catching up on what has been going on in the city since he left. He stumbles across multiple articles about some vigilante up in Hell's Kitchen which leads him to find more articles about more vigilantes. Or heroes, as some people in the comments might refer to them.

It does not change anything about his plans. It might even make him feel surer about what he has been intending to do since he got back. 

See, when Steve was on the plane home, he promised himself he would help people who were getting hurt like he did when he was younger. And if he could find the people who have hurt him for the last seven years in the process then even better.

It takes a few hours for Steve to purchase everything he needs online. He sets up a PO box for everything to be sent to so that no one would suspect a thing. 

As soon as he is done with that, he looks for Bucky. He is not hard to find and Steve definitely knows where to look. The more he reads about him, the sadder he feels. How could he have left his best friend alone?

When Steve finds where he works, he grabs his phone and the keys to his old motorcycle his mom had kept all those years. He is not thinking clearly but he knows he has to find Bucky, has to see him, tell him something, anything.

Half an hour later, Steve is standing at the front desk of the eighty-fourth police precinct in Brooklyn asking for detective James Barnes. Steve is taken upstairs and the desk sergeant leaves him there, telling him to wait for Detective Barnes at his desk.

Steve knows Bucky is behind him the second he steps inside the room. As Steve turns around, Bucky's features change drastically but he still walks slowly and confidently towards his desk.

"Hey Buck," Steve said when Bucky sits down in front of him.

There is only silence between them for a long while. Bucky is just staring at Steve, studying his face before slowly looking down to Steve's broad chest and wide shoulders. 

Bucky's hair is longer than Steve had ever seen before and he has a light stubble on his face. There is something different on his face but Steve cannot quite place it. Bucky looks tired and he probably is. After everything Steve read, he knows how much pressure the police department is under right now, with all the vigilantes running around. Especially in Brooklyn.

The thought of Bucky still being in Brooklyn makes Steve smile a little. They might have lived together in Manhattan for a few years but Bucky has always been true to his roots. 

_You_ _can take the boy out of Brooklyn but you can't take_ _Brooklyn_ _out of the boy._

"What do you want, Rogers?" Bucky asks with a voice deeper than Steve remembers. He knows his eyes change, his focus now more on Bucky's chest than on his face because _holy shit_ , when did he get so ripped?

"I had to see you," Steve says. "You didn’t come to the hospital or to my place."

Bucky nods slowly and exhales loudly.

"Well, maybe you should have thought about the fact that maybe I didn't wanna see you."

The tone alone breaks Steve's heart. The words, they cut through his whole body. His body tenses up and for the first time in years, he feels pain. It's a feeling he managed to block so well in the past but sitting here, in front of his best friend, a man he has known for almost twenty-five years, hearing that very same man telling he does not want to see him after seven years apart, well that is a whole other world of pain.

On the outside though, Steve just nods and gets up without another look at Bucky, afraid he might just cry if he does.

What the hell could have happened to Bucky in the last seven years if he doesn’t want to see Steve?

As he steps out of the police station, he sees Sam, leaning against a black SUV with tainted windows. The constant smirk on his face seems to fade when he looks at Steve's face and Steve is somewhat grateful for that. He only nods at Sam as he gets in the car, leaving his bike behind, not really caring about it in that moment. 

Sam doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even look back at Steve for that matter. He leaves him be and once again, Steve is thankful. As they drive back to Manhattan, Steve lets a few tears stream down his face but angrily wipes them away. He does not cry. Not even for Bucky, not even when his heart feels like it might explode.

When they get home, Steve heads straight for the basement but he is stopped by his mother who, with a worried look on her face, tells him he has a visitor upstairs. He sighs, not wanting to see anyone, not after the disaster that was his reunion with Bucky but he heads upstairs anyway, not wanting to be rude to whoever is waiting for him.

As he enters his loft, he sees the last person he thought would want to see him.

Peggy Carter is sitting on his bed, looking down at her hands. Her head snaps up when she hears the doors open and she smiles softly until she sees the look on Steve face.

She gets up and walks towards him, lifting an arm up. Steve braces himself for the slap he is expecting but instead, he feels Peggy wrapping her arms around him, one over his left shoulder and one under his right arm. He sighs and hugs her back, burrowing his face in her neck, feeling safe and comfortable like this.

When Peggy steps back, they look at each other for a long time without saying a word but it feels nice, it feels familiar. She grabs his face and softly smiles at him.

"I'm not mad at you, Steven," she tells him in a hushed voice, her British accent sounding so thick.

Steves's eyes soften and he looks down, not knowing what to say or how to look at her knowing what he has done, what he put her and her family through. 

"I'm so sorry, Pegs," he finally says, looking up at her.

"I don't blame you, for any of it. Not anymore. You couldn’t have known, no one could have," she says, reaching for his hands. "I can't even imagine what you went through."

No, she couldn’t, no one could. What happened to him was horrible and rough and no one could ever understand it. No one will ever know.

"What's got you looking so sad, Steven?" She asks, softly squeezing his hands.

"I went to see Bucky. He did not want to see me."

Her eyes soften unbelievably and she almost looks sad. She gives him a tiny smile and tugs on his arms to bring him over to the bed. They sit in silence for a moment before Peggy speaks again.

"James went through a lot too. After you die – disappeared – he enlisted. He didn’t know what to do with his grief so he went to war. When he came back, after his second tour, he just wasn’t the same."

Steve can't believe what he's hearing. Bucky, his Bucky went to war, saw horrible stuff just like Steve did and suddenly he can’t breathe, he can't think and that's when he breaks. Tears start running down his face, and that doesn’t help him breathe and he knows he's having a panic attack but there is nothing he can do. 

Peggy starts running her hand through Steve's hair, telling him to breathe in sync with her, murmuring words in his ears, just like she used to do when they were together and somehow that just makes it worse because now he's thinking about how good they were together and how hurt he was when she ended things. Everyone always said they were so perfect for each other, how they should get married and have a ton of babies and somehow, Steve believed it was going to happen. Until Peggy broke things off that is. 

They had been together for years, never took the leap of moving in together because he didn't want to leave Bucky and maybe that was part of the problem. He has never wanted to leave Bucky. He was the only constant in Steve's life and he expected that to not have changed. 

But everything changed. He was realizing that now. Everything fucking changed and he is going to have to get used to that.

"What happened to him?" Steve asked, his voice breaking but finally breathing normally again.

"That's not my story to tell," she answered, looking worriedly at Steve.

Steve just nods, knowing she is right but still angry at Bucky for not wanting to talk to him.

They sat there for a long time, talking about what had happened during the last few years, just like old friends, just like nothing had ever happened between them. It felt so good to have someone to talk to.

Steve has been back for a week now and none of his friends had come to see him. He realizes now that he never really had any except for Peggy and Bucky. And one of them didn’t even want to have anything to do with him. Wasn’t that just sad?

When Peggy leaves, the sun was already low in the sky, the city feeling a little calmer than it had been a few hours earlier. Steve is feeling calmer too, thanks to Peggy. She promises him to come back in the next couple of days. She gives him her number then leaves with a soft kiss on his cheek.

When he comes back inside, Sarah is sitting in a chair in the living room, watching something on tv. He seats down next in the couch next to her and says nothing. 

"It was nice to see Peggy," she told him after a brief moment of silence.

"Yeah, it really was."

When night comes, Steve doesn’t sleep. But then again, he barely does these days. It's not like he needs to since what they did to him. 

Every second that passes reminds him of what happened on the island. It's not only in his head, it's also all over his body, inside of it. He gets up to get a glass of water when he catches a glimpse of his back in the reflection in the window. The scars extend from his lower back up to his shoulder blades. They used to look red and angry but now they are so old that they just like they're a part of his skin, like they have always been there. Sometimes, it feels like they have.

His torso isn't that much better. He has fewer scars but they look bigger, deeper. And they probably are. These were the first ones, when they were still trying to figure out how to make their serum work.

See, something he will never tell a soul is that the people he was with on that island made him a lab rat. 

After being with Erskine for a few weeks, people came for him, for them. Steve didn't even know there were other people on the island but apparently, they knew Erskine. They came during the night and grabbed them before putting a bag over their head and dragging them somewhere. 

When they finally arrived to their camp, the bags where off and Steve and Abraham were surrounded by twenty men in military gear and for a second, he thought he was safe, he was saved, he was going to go home. But then one of the men hit him in the head with his gun and Steve passed out.

He woke up the next morning with the sun in his face and blood in his mouth. He was inside a tent, alone. He tried to move, to get up, but he was tied up to the central pole of the tent. It took hours before someone came in to check on him. They gave him water and stale bread then left. Steve had never been so scared in his life.

The men didn’t speak to him for a week. Every time they came in, he asked about Erskine but they never answered. Until one day, he got punched in the face for asking. It didn’t stop him from doing it every single day.

One day, a man that looked like he was the one in charge came to see him. He untied him, gave him better food and a lot more water. When Steve was done, he made him get up.

"What did Erskine tell you?" the man asked.

Steve didn’t answer so the man asked again. Still no answer. The punch somehow came as a surprise to Steve, even though it should not have.

"Nothing. He didn’t say nothing," Steve cried from where he was sitting on the floor.

"Did he talk about anyone on the island?" The question was punctuated with a kick to the stomach.

"No, he always told me we were alone," Steve answered with a groan.

"How did you end up here?"

And so, Steve told the man about the plane crash, about the days he spent in the middle of the sea, trying to survive in the sun and the heat with barely any water or food. He told him about the first weeks on the island by himself and how Abraham found him and helped. 

"Erskine seems to think you are too good a man for what we're doing here," the man told Steve, pulling him up. "But I think that makes you perfect for it."

He punched Steve one more time before tying him up again. He took a syringe out of one of the pockets on his pants and injected Steve with whatever was in it. Steve screamed in pain, the liquid burning it's way trough the veins. He could feel it spreading in his body. The pain was excruciating. 

"Tomorrow, we start the tests," the man said before leaving.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve learns some truths about what happened when he was away

Steve wakes up sweating and almost crying. It hasn't happened in a long time. He learned how to control himself, his emotions and his reactions a pretty long time ago.  

It wasn’t easy. Nothing about the last seven years was  _easy_. 

The torture he went through wasn’t easy. The experiments done on him weren't easy. Escaping wasn’t easy. Coming home definitely wasn’t  _easy_. 

For years after they succeeded in making Steve a "super soldier", as they put it, they kept on doing more tests. They thought that maybe they could figure out how to make it, make him, better, more powerful, more perfect. They never did. 

When Steve came home, he had only one thought in mind; make them pay. 

He knew the company the people on the island worked for was based out of New York City. He knew that is was where he needed to start. And so, coming back, coming home, made sense for him. 

After washing all the sweat and anxiety off of his body, Steve goes and starts his research.  

He doesn't really know where to start, except for that one last name he remembers hearing a lot on the island.  _Pierce_. 

He knows it's a long shot. How many men could be named Pierce in Manhattan alone? 

He finds a few names that could be the Pierce he's looking for. One of them is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, another one is a politician and some others are just low-level criminals. He thinks the last ones might be useless but it doesn’t hurt to make sure. He will go after them tonight. 

When the sun starts to set, Steve heads for the basement. He goes into the same room he goes to every single day and takes out what he will need. 

He opens one of the crates on one side of the room, revealing a dark blue suit, made out of Kevlar and decorated with a big silver star in the middle of his chest. He puts it on then pulls leather straps around his shoulder where a big magnet holds the two parts together. Next, he pulls out a helmet the same color as the suit with a silver "A" on the forehead. Before putting it on, he covers his eyes with dark blue paint, making his eyes pop but his features harder to recognize. He gets everything in place before taking out a big round shield, another big silver star in the middle on a blue background and surrounded by a red circle. 

He walks towards the tunnel on the other side of the room, continues on for about two minutes to where his bike is waiting for him then he heads out into the New York City streets with one single thought in mind; find the man responsible for the hell he went through for seven years. 

Steve finds the first man named Pierce in an alley in Queens. He watches the stranger finish a drug deal before going in.  

As the man is putting the money in his pocket, Steve throws his shield, which hits the drug dealer in the hand, before coming back to Steve's hand like a boomerang. 

Pierce looks up at him, fear very clear in his dark eyes as Steve edges closer. 

"What do you know about Hydra?" Steve demands in a very low and deep voice, sounding so different than he usually does. 

"What?" The drug dealer asks, shaking a little. 

Steve takes a step towards him, which makes the man flinch in terror. "I won't ask again." 

Pierce looks up at Steve, scared, and shakes in head fervently. Steve takes another step forward and presses his shield lightly to the man's throat, not saying another word.  

The shaking gets worse and Steve is getting impatient so he pushes the man against the brick wall on one side of the alley and presses the shield harder. 

"I've never heard of it, I swear," the man pleads and, with on last push of his shield, Steve lets go of the man and hops back onto his motorcycle. 

He goes through the first half of the list of street criminals he has and every encounter more or less goes just like the first one. When Steve gets home, he feels exhausted and falls asleep instantly. 

This is the best sleep he has gotten in a long, long time. 

He is woken up by his phone rigging on his bedside table the next morning. He blindly grabs it and manages to answer without having to open his eyes at all. 

"Good morning," says a happy voice, tinged with a beautiful British accent. 

Peggy. 

Steve only manages a grunt, which makes Peggy laugh on the other end of the line. Steve had missed this laugh so bad. 

"Up and at 'em, Steven" she exclaims, a smile hearable in her voice, "you need to get off your ass today." 

Steve grunts again, this time sitting up and opening his eyes to see on his alarm clock that it's only nine in the morning. He didn’t go to bed until six this morning so even though he doesn't  _need_ a lot of sleep, it's still nice to get some. Fucking Peggy. 

"What do you mean?" Steve asks, his mind still foggy with sleep. 

"If you’d look at your text messages, my friend, you will see James's number. Call him," she says, her tone now serious. 

"But he doesn’t wanna talk to me," Steve whines, "he fucking hates me for some reason," he adds. 

"Don't care," she adds before disconnecting the call. 

Steve sighs as he opens his texts and sees Peggy's last message.  

_Stop being a wuss and call him_ _._ _T_ _oday_  

He sighs again. He really doesn’t want to. And he is pretty sure that Bucky doesn’t want to either, after the way he spoke to him at the police station last week. 

But he appreciates the gesture. Peggy knows he feels miserable about the whole thing, she just wants to help. 

With a long breath in, Steve clicks on the number displayed in Peggy's text and hears the first tone. His heart starts beating faster, which hasn’t happened since he was injected with the serum. He doesn’t dwell on that too much though, he has been down that road before. 

Somehow, he still feels surprised when he hears Bucky pick up. It’s a simple "hello" but it makes Steve's breathing stop for half a second. 

"Hey," he says, not really knowing what the fuck he's supposed to be saying to his lifelong best friend who made very clear he doesn’t want to talk to him. 

"Steve?" Bucky asks, something in his voice Steve can't quite recognize. It goes cold in a second though, when Bucky speaks again. "What do you want?" 

"Buck, I – " he stops himself. He breathes in deeply, exhales silently before speaking again. "I just needed to hear your voice." And at least he is being honest. He misses Bucky so much and it has been so long that the only voice he ever hears is the one he remembers from seven years ago. And this one is so different, he wants to hear more, he wants to listen to it for hours on end. He wants to learn how it sounds when Bucky is happy or when he’s sad. Steve just wants to know this voice as well as he knew his old one. 

"I can't do this," Bucky says. "I can’t," he adds. 

"What are you talking about, Buck?" 

"Don't," he exclaims loudly. "Don’t call me that," he says, in a much lower voice. "Whatever you think you're looking for, you won't find it in me. I'm not the person you used to know Steve. A lot has happened since the last time I saw you." 

The tone of his voice breaks Steve's heart a little.  

"Neither am I," Steve tells him, hoping it will make Bucky feel less sad, less alone. "Let's meet up and talk about it?" 

"I'm sorry Steve, I can't do this again," Bucky answers before hanging up. 

Steve is confused now, more so than hurt.  

What can't he do again? Be friends with Steve? See him? Talk to him?  

Steve thinks about it all day. And when the night falls and he heads for the basement, his head isn't fully in the game which is how he doesn't notice someone following him down there.  

He closes the door behind him and starts getting ready. As he takes his shirt off, someone knocks on the door, calling his name at the same time. 

Sam. 

Steve doesn’t bother with a shirt and goes to open the door, making sure all of his gear is neatly hidden away somewhere.  

On the other side of the door, stands Sam in a nice suit that hides the fact that he is carrying at least three weapons. Steve knows it's more. 

"What do you want?" Steve asks when his bodyguard's eyes wander over his chest without saying a word. 

"I – you... um..." Sam trails off. He seems to realize that staring at his boss's scars probably isn't the best strategy to earn his trust so he shakes himself and looks back at Steve. "Planning on going somewhere tonight?" 

Steve shakes his head "no" and gestures to the room behind him, filled with workout gear and weights. Sam just nods. 

"I know you don’t want me here," Sam says. 

Steve sighs and goes back into the room, showing his scars to the other man, not caring. He hears Sam's breath stop for a second as he sees Steve’s back but neither men comments. 

"I just want you to be safe," Sam adds. "It's the least I can do." 

"What do you mean?" Steve asks, genuinely curious.  

"I couldn’t protect your father." 

Steve frowns, looking up at Sam. "What is  _that_ supposed to mean?" 

Sarah said his dad died of a heart attack. Was she lying? She couldn’t be. Steve read the articles, everything said that it happened that way.  

"I know what your mom told you. She's not wrong," Sam says, looking down at the ground. "She just doesn’t know the whole story."  

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Steve demands. Deep down, he thinks he knows where this is going but he doesn’t want to hear it, he doesn’t want to know. 

"Your dad was a good man," Sam starts, "but he was into shady stuff too. When you disappeared, it got worse." 

Steve wants to shake him, yell at him, demand for him to say what he needs to but he remains silent. They both do.  

He always knew his dad was in business with bad people. But Joseph was a good man, he really was. He just had to sometimes do something bad in order to do something good. It doesn’t make sense to a lot of people but it always had to Steve.  

"Say it," Steve says, in a low and gravelly voice. "Just say it." 

Sam nods and takes a step towards Steve. "Your father's heart attack wasn’t natural." 

And there it is.  

It's hard to hear but really, Steve is not all that surprised. The people his dad knew – it was bound to happen. He only nods at Sam without saying a word, which makes the other man walk up to him and put a hand on Steve's shoulder. He doesn’t shrug it off. There is no point. 

"My mom doesn’t know, does she?" 

Sam only shakes his head, looking down for a second before looking back up at Steve a second later. "I think I know who did it." 

And that is just music to Steve's ears. He can put his own vendetta aside for a bit if it means going after the people who took his dad from him. From Sarah. Taking a step back, Steve looks up at Sam with a look that means he would do anything to get to these people. 

"Since Joseph died, I did some research about the people he was working with. A lot of them work for S.H.I.E.L.D. and a lot of them are paid way more than the average agent they are," Sam starts, still looking at Steve, trying to not let his eyes go back down to the scars on his chest. "I think the agency is corrupt." 

Steve nods and internally debates if he can trust Sam with this one piece of information. After all, Sam has been trying to bring down whoever killed his father. Maybe help wouldn’t be bad for what he's doing.  

"Does the name Pierce sound familiar to you?" Steve finally asks. 

Sam frowns at the question, nodding slowly. He looks suspicious of something but Steve isn't about to tell him what he's up to. He just wants more information on the guy. See if he's on the right path. By the look in Sam's eyes, he definitely is.  

"He's the assistant director," Sam answers, looking closely at Steve. "Why?"  

Steve shrugs, telling Sam he was just wondering because he has heard the name in passing before. The other man doesn’t look convinced but Steve couldn’t care less if he tried. 

With a nod, Sam says "I think he's part of it." He nods at Steve again then leaves the room, giving Steve some space to think about the loaded conversation they just had. 

Once the door closes after Sam, Steve goes and locks it before going back to what he was doing before.   

Steve looks at the shield for a second, running his hand over it, trying to feel the coldness of the metal. He can't. He puts the shield on his back, where it instantly attaches to the magnet and heads for the tunnel.  

When he was younger, he would use this tunnel to sneak out and hang out with Bucky. From now on, he will use it to avenge his dad. And himself.  

As he rides his bike out of the dark tunnel he realizes that the people he is looking for might be the same people who hurt his dad. Who  _killed_ him. 

Tonight, he's going to find Alexander Pierce and soon, he will pay for what he did to Steve's family. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas everyone!  
> Sooooooo sorry for how long it took for me to upload this, there really isn't any excuse.  
> I hope you guys enjoyed this, im writing the next chapter already and im gonna try to be better with updates


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky finally talk

Steve definitely did not think this out. At all.

Going after the assistant director of one of the biggest intelligence agencies in the country is not the easiest thing to do.

Pierce’s office is under surveillance 24/7, so is his home and the car he uses to go from one to the other is completely bulletproof. 

Steve needs to plan this better, he can’t just show up and do his thing, it just wouldn’t work. He simply decides to go home after a few hours of just sitting outside Pierce’s house, trying to find a way in but with no luck.

As he steps out of the tunnel in his basement, his suit already off and stored next to his bike, he catches a glimpse of someone on his right.

He doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t even look because he knows the person hasn’t seen him yet. Steve knows he is basically silent, it’s part of the upsides of the damned serum that made him like this.

“On your left”, he says when he gets close enough to Sam to be able to basically whisper it.

Sam jumps so hard it almost makes Steve laugh. He doesn’t though. He hardly ever does.

“For fuck’s sake, Steve,” he squeaks, “the hell did you come from?”

Steve just shrugs and sits down next to Sam. The longer he has to be around the other man, the more Steve starts to actually like him. It’s weird.

Sam looks around the room, trying to figure out where Steve just came from but all he can see is a door that looks like it was condemned at least a decade ago. Sam decides to just shake it off and focus on what’s important. After a while, they just sit there for a little bit, not really talking about much, just making conversation. It's actually pretty nice.

After an hour, they both decide to head back up, where Sam goes home for the night and Steve goes up to his loft on the top floor. He quickly makes some food and sits down on the small table out on the balcony. 

He just sits there for what feels like hours, thinking about everything that has happened in the few weeks he’s been back. He can’t believe that the one person whose mere thought helped him get through all the horror that has happened to him in the past few years won’t even speak to him.

Bucky has always been everything to Steve. Through the best and the worst times. Whether they were happy or sad. Nothing ever drove them apart in the twenty five years they have known each other. Steve could have never imagined that Bucky could just stop talking to him. He never stopped thinking about his friend the whole time he was away and for Bucky to just shut him away just hurt so bad.

He picks up his phone after a while and decides to call his one friend who does want to talk to him.

“Hey,” Steve says, when the call finally connects. “Sorry if I’m waking you up,” he adds a second later.

“Everything okay Steven,” Peggy asks, her voice so soft Steve can barely hear her.

“I don’t know.” he honestly says. “I don’t understand what I did.”

There’s a pause on Peggy’s side before she sighs.

“He’s hurt. He’s mad. He’s just coming to terms with the fact that you’re back. That you’re  _alive_. I'm truly sorry he won’t talk to you, I am.”

Steve just nods to himself but he’s frowning in confusion. What could Bucky be mad at? Is he mad at Steve for disappearing? It is true that Steve is the one who straight up left and presumably died seven years ago. What a selfish prick he was back then. That probably is what Bucky is mad about. And really, the more he thinks about, the more it makes sense that Bucky would resent him for this.

Peggy tries to cheer him up for a little while, making him chuckle a couple times but he honestly can’t get Bucky out of his mind. Well, not like he is ever able to not think about Bucky fucking Barnes.

Steve lets Peggy go back to sleep after almost an hour, thinking maybe he should head to bed as well. After all, there is nothing much else he can do but torture his own brain for hours about how to get his best friend to talk to him.

As the days go by, Steve gets more and more information on Pierce, on how to get to him somehow. It's not easy. Obviously, if Pierce is a part of Hydra, none of the information on it is going to be easy to find. It is clearly either a black op or an illegal op. Steve tends to think it’s illegal but, after all, he  _is_ biased.

Sam hangs around more and more, talking about what he knows about Steve’s father and who he thinks was involved in his death. Sam even opens up about his time in the military and how it made him perfect for the job he now does. 

Sam was in the Air Force for about two tours before deciding to not reenlist after his wingman, Riley, was killed in action. It was so tough on Sam that he could barely finish his tour, he kind of went though it in a haze. Most of the stuff that happened there after Riley’s death, he doesn’t remember. 

He’s okay talking about it now, it  _has_ been a while. It took him some time though, a lot of therapy and counselling but he’s fine now. At least, as fine as he could be.

Steve very briefly talks about his time on the island, obviously omitting a  _lot_ of details about how he was definitely not alone there but he does explain how he got some of his scars. 

The big one on his shoulder comes from the time he was alone in the thick woods, before everything, and a wolf tried to eat him. The animal grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him for about a mile before letting go of him for a reason he never understood but won’t question it.

Sam doesn’t try to pry, doesn’t ask too many questions or any question actually. Steve really appreciates it.

There is no word in the world that could explain what happened to him and there is no way Steve would ever tell anyone everything that went down on that island. But being able to talk about it, even a little bit is really freeing for him. And Sam is just so good to talk to.

Steve can’t believe he’s thinking that but he’s glad Sam is in his life. 

After one night of long planning and researching, Steve falls in bed, exhausted by his previous sleepless nights. He barely thinks it through when he picks up his phone and goes to Bucky’s number. He starts writing something but erases it right away.

He does the same thing a few times before finally giving up and going to sleep for the first time in almost three days.

_He’s alone in the woods again. Nothing around him looks familiar except for the sounds._

_The sounds were always the worst. He knows they mostly came from him which, in hindsight, probably made it worst._

_As he looks around, Steve sees light so he goes to it. The more he walks, the further the light looks and suddenly, he’s sitting in a dark room, his arms tied behind his back, his body shivering._

_Looking down at his body, he sees the dried blood all over his chest, the pain barely there. He never feels the pain anymore. It’s part of it. Part of the serum he was injected with. No more pain, at least physical. His heart aches all the time. Every second of every day, he thinks of his mother, his father, his friends, Bucky._

_It's been around two years now, he has been injected by three different serums, all of them supposed to make him better. That's why they keep on torturing him, they’re trying to find a way to make him heal faster. It's not working yet but they keep on trying._

_The door next to Steve opens up and light floods in, making him close his eyes and when he opens them again, he’s sitting next to Sharon, on a plane to Australia._

_Her face is full of life and she looks so happy and safe._

_All of a sudden, the plane starts to shake. Sharon’s face is now full of fear and worry but Steve doesn’t know what to do so he just holds her as the plane goes down faster and faster. Weirdly enough, Steve feels calm, his last thought before the plane hits the water being Bucky’s face, smiling at him not longer than a couple days ago._

Steve wakes up from his dream a little startled. He hasn’t dreamed of the crash in a long time, not since his first year into captivity. After all, much worse things have happened to him after that so he didn’t have time to dwell on that one day anymore. The only thing he could never shake was Bucky’s face. But then again, he thought of the man all the time for the past seven years. He still does.

After lying in bed for a little while, he decides he should text Bucky and actually try to talk to him. He just tries to not overthink it and just writes a simple “hey, this is Steve” before sending it.

He feels like he’s going to be sick for a little bit before doing anything he can to keep his mind focused on something else. 

About an hour later, his phone rings, letting him know he just got a text. Steve breathes deeply for a couple of seconds before picking up his phone and looking at it. Bucky’s name is just there, staring at him. Underneath the name, two words are displayed: “i know”

Steve softly smiles. It’s not a bad answer. It's not good, per se, but it’s better than nothing. Or than just a “fuck off”.

“Do you think we could talk?” Steve writes.

He's anxious again now, but this time the answer comes right away.

“whatever”

Again, could be worse.

“Can you swing by today?”

Bucky just sends back a single shrugging emoji and nothing else. Steve guesses it means yes. Steve just sends back a time, asking if that would be good and again, same answer. Jesus, Bucky is just still as much of a dick as he always was.

All day, Steve tries to keep himself occupied so he doesn’t look at the time every single second. He goes out and runs errands with his mom and Sam which takes a good half of his afternoon. When they get back home, Steve goes up to his room to paint for a couple hours but when that doesn’t work, he goes down to the basement and starts working out as hard as he possibly can.

He’s so focused on what he’s doing that he doesn’t hear the footsteps coming down the stairs. His weird trans breaks when there’s a knock on the door. He just yells to whoever it is to come in, looking around the room to try and find a shirt. When he finally finds one and turns around, he sees Bucky standing there, his eyes just focused on his now clothed chest. Steve clears his throat, feeling so uncomfortable under that gaze.

“Hey,” Steve says, feeling a little less nervous now that Bucky’s eyes are on his face. 

Bucky simply nods at him before looking away, letting his eyes roam on literally everything, anything, in the room but Steve. He sees a chair so he goes to it and sits down, looking at his hands in silence for what feels like hours to Steve.

Steve leans on the desk next to Bucky and softly sighs when he sees that Bucky still won’t look at him.

“So,” Bucky says, looking up and straight in front of him, still away from the other man in the room.

“So,” Steve repeats. “Bucky, could you look at me for a second?”

Bucky closes his eyes for a second and breathes in before looking up at Steve. His eyes are full of something that resembles pain but Steve can’t quite recognize it. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, his eyes focused on Bucky’s face. “Whatever it is that I did to make you hate me this much, I’m truly sorry.”

Bucky scoffs and look away from Steve again. He's silent for a couple of minutes before finally opening his mouth.

“I don’t hate you,” he says, his eyes drifting back to Steve’s chest, looking so hard it makes Steve feel like Bucky can see right through the fabric. 

Steve just hums in response to what Bucky just said. What else could make Bucky act this way? What other reason could he have? 

“You don’t understand what happened after you died, Steve,” Bucky adds, looking at Steve right in the eyes, not blinking. “I was so  _mad_.”

“Bucky, I wish I could take it all back, I really do,” Steves says, reaching for his friend’s shoulder but taking it back at the last second.

“Not at you, Steve. I was mad at myself.”

Steve looks taken aback by that. He gets off the desk he was leaning on and decides to sit down on the chair next to Bucky.

Before Steve can say anything, Bucky speaks up.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“Then why won’t you see me?”

“Because I can’t,” Bucky says, his voice cracking. “Like I said, you have no idea what happened while you were gone.”

“You know, a lot has happened on my side to,” Steve tells him, looking hurt.

“Clearly,” Bucky answers, looking up and down Steve’s body.

Steve is so used to it now that he forgets he wasn’t always this muscular. This must be crazy to Bucky to look at. Steve, who used to be this tall and skinny kid is now this tall hunk of a man.

“I thought you died, Steve,” Bucky says, getting up. “You have no idea how that made me feel, what that made me  _do_.”

Steve looks down at his hands, remembering what Peggy had said about where Bucky went after Steve disappeared. 

“You mean enlisting?”

Bucky nods, his hand very softly rubbing his left arm. Steve stores that little bit of information, telling himself he will ask later, when their relationship is better.

Bucky gets up from the chair after a couple minutes of silence and stands right in front of Steve. He doesn’t say a word, just puts his hand on Steve’s shoulder, squeezes it then walks away. Steve doesn’t watch him leave, he just looks at his hands and sighs.

At least he tried. Again. And this time it worked for a little bit, Bucky was opening up but Steve could see the pain in his eyes every time he looked at Steve so maybe it was best to just give him time, maybe just text him from time to time but he swears to himself that he will not force this. He will give Bucky as much time as the man needs because he’s still his best friend, he’s still Bucky and he still loves him just the same. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. I hope you enjoyed this, i'm sorry i'm so bad with updating. i'll try to get better at it i promise.  
> Please let me know in the comments what you wanna see next, what you think of the story so far and everything else. Thanks xx


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